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MailChimp with a CalendarSnack. What a perfect marrriage! So you’re using MailChimp and you want to invite people to an event your hosting by sending them a calender invite to track the RSVP’s. Follow the Videos below for a detailed review of the steps. Click here to get the PDF Screen Shots.

We just released 2.1 of our Big Data solution designed for digital marketing OEM’s. You can use it for free to create and promote your events by sending real calendar invites to track RSVP’s from your customer’s Google and Outlook calendar clients.

Just create a calendar invite in your Google or Outlook calendar and invite us to your event with this email address: create@invitethis.com. We will send you a CalendarSnack notification email with all the information needed to get started.

In 5 seconds I created a CalendarSnack and received the Calendar Code for Web Site Embeds, MailChimp Call to Action Embed, a Calendar Landing Sign up Page and instructions on how to send direct Calendar Invites for the event using a subscribe email address. All of these sending options track Calendar Invite RSVP’s for the event in the CalendarSnack reporting engine.

If you are an OEM and purchase the service provider edition you will have the ability to view the event analytics of the all the RSVP’s for the calendar events in your domain. We can customize this for your brand with whatever domain you want to use for RSVP communications.

This is a completely headless and serverless design. All built on a AWS stack so we can get you up and running in 30 minutes in your AWS account.

There are 100’s of use cases for OEM email marketing platforms and major brands using our technology. As of this blog posting there are 5 Billion mobile phones that have a calendar application onboard. That’s a lot of opportunity to promote and track RSVP’s for your events. You can get the PDF workbook version here for offline. Click Here.

Data Analytics are collected within the domain of RSVP the service. In this example we are illustrating CalanderSnack.com data. This can be your own domain and web service if you wish for RSVP communications to your customers.

Step 1 -Develop your Calendar Invite in Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar application of your choice for desktop, mobile or web app and invite us by adding us in your calendar client for your event.

Step 2 — You will receive a confirmation email like below when you invite us with create@invitethis.com. Click on the snack link to retrieve the CalendarSnack reporting page.

Step 3- After clicking the CalendarSnack URL you will see your Calendar Snack Summary page. There are 4 primary buttons: Snack Summary, Invitee Details, Get Code, Send Invite. The Snack page lands in Snack Summary mode as seen below.

Step 4 — Click the Send Invite button for testing the calendar invitation prior to using the code generator for Web Modals in web pages or MailChimp code in a MailChimp Call to Action button in a campaign. You can place your test email address in here to see how it looks on your test account calendars.

Step 5- Review of Send Invite function from the perspective of the calendar client. This first batch is showing Outlook compatibility for the July 7th Webinar and the ability to RSVP like a normal calendar invite. When your customer RSVP’s by selecting Yes, No or Maybe in the Calendar client interface we count that in the Calendar Snack reporting engine. You can try it with your test email address’s and see it show up in the RSVP counter.

Step 6 — Review of Send Invite test function from the perspective of the calendar client. This second batch is showing Google Calendar client compatibility for the July 7th Webinar and the ability to RSVP like a normal calendar invite. When your customer RSVP’s by selecting Yes, No or Maybe in the Calendar client interface we count that in the CalendarSnack reporting engine. You can try it with your test email address’s and see it show up in the RSVP counter.

Step 7 — Review of the CalendarSnack reporting page. You can see in this Calendar Snack, 4 people have been sent a calendar invitation and 4 people have accepted the calendar invite onto their calendar. When someone accepts the invite onto the calendar, that event will use the notifications built into the calendar client on that device.

Step 8 — This is a review of Email Box modal and Name plus Email Box modal that are prebuilt and can be used for quick embeds into any web pages by copying the code and placing into your website. When someone fills in their email address we send them the calendar invite for that event and track RSVP.

Step 9 — This is a review of Full Event modal and the Quarter Size modal that are prebuilt and can be used for quick embeds into any web pages by copying the code and placing into your website. When someone fills in their email address we send them the calendar invite for that event and track RSVP.

Step 10 — This is a review of the Email platform support of the Mail Chimp code generator for Call to Action embeds into graphics within a Mail Chimp campaign for RSVP tracking. When the Call to action button is clicked in MailChimp email, we send a calendar invite to the email address that is resident in the MailChimp template and send them to our Splash page or one that you can provide in our template.

Step 11 — This is a review of the steps for the MailChimp embed in the sample MailChimp campaign. Once you get this down a couple times it takes less than 30 seconds to get the code and paste it into the Call to Action button in your MailChimp template. When a customer clicks on the CTA, they receive a real calendar invitation that we track for RSVP and get sent to a landing page of your choice.

Step 12 — This is the overall work flow of what happens in the Mail Chimp Call to action button with the CalendarSnack solution. The same work flow applies with the generic email provider template.

Step 13 —This is a review of the generic Email code generator for Call to Action embeds into graphics within an email campaign for RSVP tracking. When the Call to action button is clicked in specific email provider setup in this template, we send a calendar invite to the email address that is resident in the email template and send them to our Splash page or one that you can provide in our template. This template is useful only if your email marketing provider supports mail merge codes and you know what they are.

Step 14— Review of the CalendarSnack landing page. We include a landing page that is a URL that you can package up and use in email signatures or in emails, for ad hoc event signups. This is one of my personal favorites. In less than 5 seconds you can have something for event registration and tracking calendar invites for your prospects or customers.

Step 15— Review of the Live 4 stock web embeds modals on the test site for the July 7th Webinar from 9am to 10am. Each of these modals took approximately 5 minutes to setup. The last one is the Landing Page URL that is generated for each Calendar Snack.

Step 16 — The last item of the review is a newly introduced service we added called the direct calendar send option. It works by using a “bulk@invitethis.com” in the send to field of your email client. We support up to 50 email address per CSV file attached as a free service per event.

Included in the CSV file is the Header “UID” and “Email Address”, then the corresponding data for each field. See example below. We will have a security token soon for those that want to use the service in alignment of opt-in list building for event management. The token will be issued for direct calendar event sending to large email lists for event promoters.

As we wrap up the year we wanted to finish with a format we have been testing. Its a 1 Minute Video from our YouTube Channel, a detailed Screen Shot guide and a PDF Workbook for you. We are working on an OEM playbook and this should be completed in the next week. Happy New year!

As we wrap us this year, we are getting ready to release our production product. Here is a quick snap shot of our MailChimp RSVP calendar invite tracking. See steps here, along with video and PDF guide. Happy Holidays from the team here at 31events.com!

So here is the use case. You have tried a Calendar Snack. You like it and you say wouldn’t be cool if I could upload an email list to send calendar invites to people that want to get direct Calendar invitations from me so I can track the RSVP’s? (Today we support CTA’s in web embeds and in Email vendors like MailChimp and 20+ others. )

We are working on this for our next build for January 2019 release.

So you create a calendar invite on your calendar client of choice – Google, Outlook or Yahoo and just invite us to your event with this email address ->new@sk3l.net< . You will then receive your calendar snack email with all the information in it, including how to bulk upload a small email list for direct calendaring sending and RSVP tracking. Once you upload the list you will be able to review and confirm the send.

That’s it! – Super simple! In the mean time give us a try by just adding us to your calendar event.

At 31events.com we develop messaging technology that enables the RSVP calendar interface within email clients to track the responses of the individual event. The technology can be used for all kinds of use cases for time-based events across vertical markets.

This gives every marketer the ability to communicate directly with a customer’s calendar. When a calendar invite is sent, it is correctly displayed in the message body to be read in the correct client format for webinars, promotions and attachments such as coupons.

The Calendar Snack package has been designed for marketing agencies and software OEM’s that want to add value through the ability to send and track calendar invites in an easy way by integrating them into call to action campaigns with a managed service. The web service supports calendar message building, message sending and RSVP’s return receipt reporting.

The calendar invites can be emdedded into web pages and popular email packages like Mail Chimp using the code generator. The calendar invite data is available in a reporting interface for all RSVP’s providing granular details for your marketing campaigns.

Example of the Event Summary.

The components of the messaging solution are using Amazon Web Services S3, SES, Dynamo DB, SNS and API gateway to process the calendar invites with our custom developed proprietary Lambda functions. The solution design is “Headless”. This means you have no Create, Read, Update, and Delete or (CRUD) for the Calendar Invites. The customer sends you an calendar invite off their native calendar client to your branded domain email address. That message is sent to us and we re – generate a packaged calendar invite complete with instructions on how to use and test the calendar event with details of the code embed for web pages and email call to action embeds. Once that process is complete – which just takes a few seconds to complete, we sent a confirmation email to the event organizer from the Calendar Invitation with all the details.

Example of the event confirmation email once the customer sent us a Calendar Invite below.

The calendar event payload includes Snack Summary, Invitee Details, Get Code and Send a Test that are auto generated each time by our web service by sending an email to your domain address mail box setup to process the Calendar Snacks.

We generate code for each calendar event which is packaged into the Calendar Snack payload.

Example of the GET CODE feature for calendar invite web page embed.

Example of the GET CODE feature for Mail Chimp embed.

Send a Test feature is included into each CalenderSnack email for a quick review. If you don’t like it after testing the calendar invite, then you can adjust your event on your native calendar client and send another request to get a Calendar Snack. Simple and easy for the marketeer and software OEM to integrate as a service.

The entire solution delivery can be rolled out in less than 1 week under your AWS account with your branded domain. We can also manage the solution for you if you don’t have the resources.

For details on how easy solution can be packaged see CalendarSnack.com and check out the detailed documentation here. If you have any questions or need a quote please contact us on Drift @ 31events.com.

If your time-limited marketing campaign is not onTHEIRcalendar, it doesn’t exist.

Now the story …

About two years ago, I reconnected with a friend from my past (we had worked together and later I worked for him at his company). He started telling me about this idea he had developed into an app — it sent calendar invitations for events (like webinars or seminars) and for time-limited sales offers (like coupons).

At first, it didn’t really sink in what he was telling me. Hell, people had been inviting me to webinars for the last decade, and I had managed webinars and training events (along with setting up registration) and all those things had just worked.

Or had it?

He just asked me to think about the process, just for webinars. And I started listing all the things I had to do to get a webinar up and running — the task list can get extremely detailed, but at a high level, it goes like this

Set the date

Set the subject

Create the material

Determine how to get the word out (email with online registration)

Practice

Show up and present

He wasn’t looking the solve the whole problem, just the “Get The Word Out” problem — which is tied to all sorts of numbers, and filters, and dynamics — Like CTAs, Click-through, Registration, Multiple Clicks and Tracking, Open Rates, etc. and so on. There’s lots of numbers to help track what’s happened within that flow of “Get The Word Out”.

In general — all marketers know there is some level of resistance at every step of the way, and our job is to (a) create some level of interest to (b) break through as much resistance as possible. It all comes down to some simple things we are asking our wonderful customers and prospects to do … like …

Open an email

Click on a link

Land on your registration page

Fill in a form with their “vital” information

Receive another email about the webinar

Read that second email

Save something to their calendar

Show up

Stay to the end

That’s really a lot to ask, in a simple process where they know (and we know) our informational webinar is really a way to sell them something. It’s all a “wink, wink, nod, nod” thing between everyone.

But the question I have to you is …

Did they really get it on their calendar?

I’m going to let you in on a dirty little secret, the Calendar is not easy — email is easy — and the mere fact you believe that you emailed a calendar invitation, doesn’t mean you really did. I have tested over 20 email/calendar clients over the past two years, and most fail. The email shows up, but the calendar part doesn’t really work. That’s why, most emails that include anything to do with the calendar have a little bar (similar to the picture below) that is supposed to be easy for the Invitee, but doesn’t work most of the time.

typical add or save to calendar bar used in email

Now I get it. Most of us in marketing are worried about other things — like getting the content right, not the “flow” and if everything works properly. We leave that to the marketing ops folks to work out. Hell, your martech tools should handle that without any problems at all — that’s why you pay them money every month, to handle the minutia inside that involved flow. You have a presentation to create, presenters to prep and the show to put on.

Here’s the problem …

No Webinar vendor does it right

No Email Service Provider does it right

No Marketing Automation company does it right

No Landing Page company does it right

In fact, unless you are fairly technical, understand both email, webpage, and calendar technology — along with how to both “ingest” and “build” a well formatted calendar invitation — you won’t get it right either. As I stated earlier, it’s really hard.

I’m not hear to tell you we have all the answers, but what I can tell you is that we’ve thought through lots of the problems. But the first thing we did was figure out how to send a Well-Formatted Calendar Invitation. One that would work for 90%+ of the market (including desktop and mobile calendar clients). That’s one of the hardest things to accomplish — and we are at about 80% today, well on our way to over 90%.

Second, why not just send a calendar invitation? If you send an email, you know the hardest thing to get is a CLICK on your CTA. Why waste it — send a calendar invitation on that click. If you want registration, then land them on the registration page, but they may or may not register. Send them a calendar invitation anyway.

Next — right now you have ZERO tracking on the invitations sent. Remember, the calendar is a bit different. There are three actions someone can take on the calendar invitation — Accept, Decline, and Tentative — or they can decide to take no action (but the event is on their calendar, unless they delete or decline it). But you have ZERO insight into those actions. You are acting out of complete blindness as to the “intent” of those people who have been sent an invitation.

The last thing that is a complete pain in the ass, is having to “create” something — basically going to an online tool and adding information that you have probably entered about a dozen times into some other tool.

What if all that could change?

Here’s the difference — and you have to think about it a bit differently too …

calendar snack create process

The first thing we did was decide to get completely rid of the CREATE part. Literally, if you already have your webinar on your calendar, just invite us (we take care of the rest).

Second, we immediately send you a “Summary” page — that way you can test it right away. See if it works. We want you testing it right away.

Third, we give you a simple link for your MailChimp campaign, or a simple iFrame for you webpage. You can design around those as much or as little as you want. We didn’t want to get into designing your campaigns, just sending a calendar invite.

Fourth, we give you the results. How you sent, actions taken, and the ability to download a simple spreadsheet with name, email and last status of the invitees.

It’s your data, and you get to have all of it available. You want to upload that list to special mailing list — do it. Or include it in your sales force automation — it’s yours.

We wanted to create something that would end up taking you a few minutes, but provide you with information and data you never had before.

We’re still in beta, so there are a few kinks being worked out, but in general, it works. It is almost effortless once you start using it, but if done right, it’s extremely powerful.

We just released the Support for MailChimp Integration. You take the code from our Calendar Snack page by clicking the code button and embed that into your Call to action for one click Calendar Invite signup from your email campaign and we track that for you in the Calendar snack report. This is designed to be free for you to use for any promotion. 1 Click Calendar Invitations in Web and Email embeds in less than 3 minutes!

Arnie just added some key fucntionality to the Calendar Snack Detail page. The active buttons now work from the Calendar Snack reporting page when you add us or “Invite us” to your Calendar event off your personal calendar like Google, Outlook or Apple native calendar. The buttons are Snack Summary, Invitee Details, Get Code for Email CTA – MailChimp- (Others coming soon), Send a Test to your self Web CTA Form, and Documentation.

Arnie has updated the front end now to include an auto generated report URL landing page for the Calendar Snack that is sent with the introduction email when you invite us to your event off your Google Calendar. Its simple. Step One – Invite us off your Google Calendar. Step Two – You will receive an auto generated email from our AutoBot (Named Cooper), and the email will have your Calendar Reporting URL in it. Follow the directions and you will be monitoring your event in 30 seconds, PDF Calendar Snacks.

GET YOUR EVENTS ON THEIR CALENDAR, IN ONE CLICK!

ABOUT US

31Events is focused on getting your events on your customer's calendar with one click. Create your event, send an email or embed into your website. Your customer only needs to enter their email address and an invitation is on the way.